As I lie here, leg raised due to snapped tendons in my right calf - an injury sustained by leaping a barrier in Hyde Park in a misguided attempt to avoid four lanes of traffic bearing towards me, four lanes of traffic I would have easily avoided if my Pavlovian instinct to follow an idiot friend who'd ignored my advice to cross at the lights hadn’t got the better of me - I find I have time to muse on a subject which has been troubling me for some time; the notion of rock and roll as a career move.

The pain I am currently dealing with is compounded by the fact that the reason I was anywhere near Hyde Park at all was to see Morrissey perform, a reason many would deem cause for minor injury in itself. The former Mancuinian was headlining one of the many festivals now littering the British summer months. This one in particular seemed more anodyne than most, a corporate affair sponsored by a telecommunications company.

As I stumbled around backstage I found myself struck by the absolute lack of atmosphere. This despite the fact that everywhere I looked someone seemed to be wielding a camera or microphone, no doubt in an eager attempt to fill their websites and channels with unquotable garbage muttered by the smatterings of anonymous popstars twisting awkwardly in their skinny-tight jeans. But however much they tried to whip up an atmosphere none of it actually meant anything. It was a litany of cliché, second hand quotes dressed up in third hand attitudes. I was standing in a crèche for trendy teenagers.

Now, as I lounge on my sofa like a latter-day Jimmy Stewart in ‘Rear Window’ - though sadly without benefit of a Grace Kelly, (the girl I had hoped to be cast in the role failed to rise to the occasion) I find myself reading the sort of light material I normally only scan when killing time at my local library, specifically the autobiography of former pop-star turned cheese farmer, (note the marvellous circularity to the two terms) Blur’s Alex James. Ans as I plough through the book’s hastily cobbled-together paragraphs I find myself struck by a singular notion; how oddly familiar the trajectory of Mr. James’ and my life seem to have been.

Both from the English suburbs, although his slightly more picturesque, we found ourselves studying at Goldsmiths College, a refuge from the tedious Oxbridge brigade and their closeted world of codified codswallop and dull superiority. For a time we both lived in squats or squat-like dwellings, (I had the edge on Alex there, largely because by the time he had left home the law had been changed, probably because of people like me, and living in an illegal premises for any length of time had become considerably harder to do).

From college our paths took another similar turn when despite any plans we might have had when enrolling on our three year courses, both of us fell into the world of Pop.

Reading through Alex’s experiences, his gradually becoming far more successful than my own, what brought me up short was the repeated echoes even though my own Pop journey had taken place almost a decade earlier. The details mirrored each other to such a degree it felt almost spooky; the travel, the hotels, venues, road crews, fans, models, night-clubs... they seemed to be almost identical.

I began to wonder whether, if you were to speak to any band going through the same process you would find it the same. We think we’re all off on our own fabulous journeys but in fact we are following a pre-ordained route mapped out years earlier by a bunch of men wearing too-tight jeans and dodgy, satin tour jackets.

It made me once more consider the depressing notion that the well-worn fantasy of being a rock star is in fact no more than a myth, that in fact ‘Rock and Roll’ has become nothing but a predictable and well-worn career path. This is of course a large reason for its irrelevance today.

I first discussed this subject with Bill Drummond. Bill wrote the legendary book ‘The Manual’, a pocket-sized paperback now exchanging hands at £250 a throw. It explained in simple detail how one went about having a number one. People bought the book and tried it. For one pair of Austrian individuals the manual worked.

Bill asked me what was it that had made me want to become a singer. I flippantly replied, “I dunno, it just seemed a logical career choice for a middle-class boy.” While I was being semi-flippant at the time, it now seems my explanation was horribly prescient.

Back in 1983, when I got my first record deal, pop as a cold-hearted career option seemed quite a radical notion.

At the time I only expected the band to last for a couple of years. In the event it lasted even shorter than I had predicted, my partner in crime quitting two weeks before the first album was due to be released. I subsequently went solo and discovering the money was so good extended my tour of duty, (I have never been so well paid since).

However, and here’s the thing, I’m pretty sure my generation - post punk, D.I.Y - was the first group of teenagers to consider Pop Music in such terms. Before then the music business had, logically enough, (outside the pre-fab pin-ups of Larry Parnes) been the preserve of musicians. You learnt an instrument, you formed a band, you played your music. If you managed to secure some kind of professional contract out of it, that was a bonus... a big bonus.

Nowadays however ‘the music and the band’ part of the equation turns out for too many people to be something of a tedious pre-requisite one has to go through in order to get the contract. (The TV talent shows of course obviate such a task - you win the contest, you get a number one, shortly followed by oblivion, but hey...)

But for the music world without a deal, the process itself becomes meaningless. In their minds you play music to get paid, to become famous, there is no other reason. That’s why the airwaves, the venues, the web-sites, the festivals are clogged up with bog-standard bands who can’t really play, can’t really write songs, and who aren’t really stars. They’ve simply jumped on the musical band-wagon in the hope of carving out a career.

Up until recently the music business has been been bloated enough to accommodate such tedious practitioners. But times are a-changing as people are becoming all too aware. Deals, the like of which could once support you, are now thin on the ground. It won’t be too long, if the day hasn’t arrived already, when the point of being in a band will once again be merely to play music, to entertain a crowd on a Saturday night.

We’ll find ourselves returning to the days before vinyl, before CD’s, before the record industry was able to package music as a sellable commodity. Thanks to downloading those days are already gone. A generation is growing up believing music should be free. The live experience they’ll pay for but the raw material is simply out there to be heard.

This is no bad thing, if only for the fact that the slew of pug-ordinary bands who neither enlighten nor entertain might quickly fade away. There’ll be nothing in it for them, no audiences turning up to their gigs, no one downloading their tracks, no hope of a deal, no hope of a career.

If this turns out to be the case bring it on I say. And while you’re about it, why not roll out the Joanna and we can all gather round like the old days and have ourselves a right proper knees-up.

As for Alex James, he sussed it. Cheese, babies and Mars... what one might call a proper job.